Dinner And Thoughts Of Romance (Sigh)

That's right....It's that time again; time for dressing up and posing nonsense followed by a delicious dinner. And on this particular night, there was a little romance on the menu.

Sigh.

Here I am in all of my flat ironed glory. Thanks, Melissa!



May I present to you, Miss Melissa. She was looking lovely as always.



Shameless before dinner photo op.;)



For the starter this night, I decided to order something from the "light" selections. I don't remember what it was called, but here is a picture of it.



I know. It looks like some one ate most of it before it ever made it to the table.

For my "main course", I also chose something from the "light" selections.
It was Pasta with Marinara Sauce.



And thankfully, no one ate any of it before it made it to the table. ;)

Now, I should probably make a little confession to the tens of you reading this right now. The reason that I chose my starter and main course from the "light" selections, is that I already knew what I was ordering for dessert. And it was not from the "light" selections.

It was officially called "Chocolate Melting Cake."
And as you can probably see, it was served with a side of vanilla ice cream to cut help cut the sweet taste.;)



But all of the people at our table affectionately called it "Sex in a Cup." ;)

Excuse me while my eyes roll back in my head and I wipe drool off of my chin just thinking about it.

But "Sex in a Cup" was not the romance that I was referring to at the beginning of this post.

No, the romance on the menu that night was between David and Barbara. They were celebrating their 41st wedding anniversary on this cruise.

Sigh.



Just look at how they look at each other with so much love in their eyes. Melissa and I were thrilled to be able to celebrate such a special occasion with them.



David and Barbara are two of the loveliest people that you could ever hope to meet. Each night, seeing them together, made me long to be back at home with my sweet hubby.

Sigh.

After singing "Happy Anniversary" to the romantic couple, Melissa and I posed for some pictures with our sweet servers.

Here we are with Gusti.



And here we are with Ioan.



Gusti and Ioan made each dinner so much fun. Melissa and I looked forward to seeing them every night.

Well, after a fun filled day in France, followed by a romantic dinner with "Sex in a Cup," Melissa and I were ready to finally get some rest.

And guess what kind of towel animal welcomed us back into our cabin on this particular night?



A sting ray, of course. Pretty cool, isn't it? ;)

Sixth Stop: Cannes, France~ Part Three

(Just a note: For some reason, Part One of this series of posts in Cannes, France, did not show up in the Google Reader. So, if you missed it, and you would like to see it, just click here. This post has some very pretty pictures. And for Part Two, you can click here.)

The last stop on our tour of France was Eze. Eze is a beautiful, charming little place.


The part we saw was nestled on the side of a mountain. The view was gorgeous.



We went into an old castle that had been converted into a shopping center. All sorts of different shops were scattered all throughout the old castle.

Right as I snapped this picture......the woman that you see just jumped right in the way of my shot. (The nerve....)



Same thing happened here, only this time it was a man who got in my way. Apparently these people did not care that I was trying to take very important pictures to share with the tens of you reading this blog.



Finally, a shot without interruptions. This is a door to one of the shops. Isn't it quaint?



Seeing this old castle made me wonder who lived here long ago? And did they have any idea that one day their home would turn into shops for tourists that get in the way of people's photo shots.



Flowers were growing all through out the castle. They were gorgeous! (As you can see, Melissa did get in the way of this photo too, but that is okay, because I love her.) ;)



I zoomed in so that you could see the flowers more clearly. Aren't they romantic?



Here I am sitting on the wall of a castle in Eze, France. That just sounds made up, doesn't it?



And here is Melissa doing the same thing. Isn't the view wonderful?



Here you can see a church peeking out of the castle walls. The yellow of the church is so striking against the blue sky and all of the surrounding greenery.



Here you can see more of the castle walls, and if you look closely will you see two crosses peeking out of a cemetery on the castle grounds.



Please feel free to completely ignore me in this next picture, but I just cannot help myself. These cars completely crack me up.



Well, that is all I have of our time in France folks, but you know what that means....The next post will be full of more posing and dinner nonsense.;)

Sixth Stop: Cannes, France~ Part Two

The first stop on our tour was Nice, France.

Although, I'm sure Nice is a lovely place, the part of Nice that Melissa and I got to see was less than lovely.

There were some nice buildings to see though...like this one. (I have no idea what it is, of course.)



And here is another one....



It was Market Day in Nice. We were told that not long before we arrived, they had their fresh flowers for sell in this area. The debris that you see on the pavement is what was left over from all of the flowers that were sold that day. The streets were wet, because they were hosing them down after clearing out all of the flowers.



As many of you unfortunately already know, I have several public bathroom related issues. I thought I was aware of all of them, but in France, I developed a new public bathroom related issue. Several of them to be exact.

For starters, men and women use the same public restrooms in France. I don't care for that very much.

The other issues I developed shortly after finding this sign to the restroom in Nice.



You will notice that the sign is pointing a certain direction, but Melissa and I looked and looked, and we could not find the public restroom anywhere. We finally located our tour guide and asked her where the public restroom was, and she said you just follow that sign......It's across the street at the beach.

Good to know.

So, we go to the beach. Only, we still don't see the public restroom. We looked and looked, then we finally spotted it. It was underground. At the beach. It felt like we were going down stairs to get on a subway, but it smelled like we were walking into the sewer system.

(Excuse me while I throw up a little bit in my mouth just recalling the smell.)

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the sewer public restroom. As we entered we saw a sign that said 35 cents. We had to pay 35 cents to pee. I had to pee so badly at this point that I really didn't care how much they charged, but still.

So, we get in line with our money, and that's when we see him. The public restroom attendant. He was nasty. He was ginormously fat. He was smoking a cigar. He had black, curly, unkempt hair. And he was wearing a bathing suit. A black Speedo to be exact. The kind that ONLY Michael Phelps should wear.

I'm just saying.

We gave the disgusting man our money, and then he pointed to something on the counter where he was sitting.

We looked to see what he was pointing at, and then that is when I realized yet another one of my public restroom related issues. He was pointing to a stack of toilet paper that we were supposed to use. Although, I don't really think that you can call it a stack, seeing as how it was only four squares of toilet paper. Four. Squares. Of toilet paper. Per person. For thirty five cents.

I looked at Melissa a little confused, and I asked her, "What would you do if you needed to go Number 2? She just looked at me and said, "I guess you would have to ask him how much for an entire roll."

As we left that sewer public restroom, I looked at Melissa and said, "God Bless America!" Amen?

Anyway, I promise that is all of the Number 1 and Number 2 talk for this post. But just let me say this, if you travel to Europe, take plenty of Charmin to Go.

And that's all I have to say about that!

Here is a picture of the gas prices while we were in France. This price is per liter, as opposed to the per gallon that we pay here in America.



The drive from Nice to Eze was beautiful. Very picturesque.



We were told that Brad and Angelina were staying somewhere in this picture while they waited to have their twins.



Isn't it gorgeous?



Imagine having this as your backyard....



You can definitely see why Brad and Angelina chose to have their babies in this particular location.



Everywhere you turned to look, you just saw beauty.



The drive to Eze was magnificent!



Join Melissa and me tomorrow for our time in Eze, France. And I promise that there will be no more talk of Number 1 or Number 2. ;)

Sixth Stop: Cannes, France

It's been a long time since I have posted about our trip to the Mediterranean. So, if you would like to, come join Melissa and me as we visit Cannes, France.

Here we are heading to Cannes.



We had to take a water taxi from the ship to the shore. The shore line is very rocky in Cannes, so the ship can only pull in so far. Here is our view from the water taxi.



If you look closely in this picture, you can see the water taxi picking up another load of people from the cruise ship.



As you can probably tell from this picture, it was very windy in Cannes.



Melissa and I waited for our tour bus inside these little tent like rooms. They provided much need relief from the wind. My hair was very thankful.



This was the view from the tents of the Port De Cannes.



I had to take this picture for Kenny and Shelly. This was a unisex bathroom. Meaning men and women go into the same bathroom. At the same time. I know. It was very weird. But there was toilet paper and paper towels, so I did not complain much.



Please feel free to completely ignore us in this next picture. We were trying to be sneaky paparazzi types.



We spotted a gentleman that we had seen on board the ship in what has to be one of the most pitiful beach ensembles that we had ever seen, so we "pretended" to get the camera out just to take our own pictures.....Then we quickly snapped this picture of him and his beach ensemble.



We first saw him by the pool on the ship, and he literally laid out in the same clothes, socks, and shoes that you see him wearing here.

Bless his heart.

And seeing as how Melissa is a professional hair dresser and all, she just had to have a picture of this hair nightmare.



Unfortunately she never got the chance to introduce him to the miracle of hair conditioner, because our bus had finally arrived.

France, look out, here we come!



This is a fancy hotel that the rich and famous stay at while they are in town for the famous Cannes Film Festival.



The tour guide spouted off a long list of famous people that had stayed here, but for some reason the only name that I can remember is Madonna.



Check out all of the sailboats. There were tons of them. It was quite a sight to see.



And the yachts. Sigh.



After passing all of the fancy hotels, sailboats, and yachts, we came up on this area of rocky beach.



It was the most beautiful water that I had ever seen. Just look at all of those brilliant shades of blue, and remember, this picture was taken through a dirty bus window.



Our tour guide told us that it was a real treat to get to see these gorgeous colors. She said that normally the water had a more gray appearance, because of the type of rock that the beach was mostly covered in. But the colors that we got to enjoy that day were due to the high winds that were blowing in.

Isn't it gorgeous? I still cannot get over all of that beautiful blue.



Well done, God!

The tour that Melissa and I chose in Cannes, really had very little to do with Cannes. We basically just drove through Cannes and headed to the cities of Nice and Eze. We pronounced the tour "Nice and Easy," but that is not how you really pronounce the names. You pronounce them like "niece" and "ez."

So, here we are heading to Nice.



If you would like to join us as we visit Nice, France, just come back tomorrow.